Reflective Practice

How well do we reflect on our own practice? What do we understand by reflective practice and how does it inform our future practice?
There has been some consensus about how reflective practice can be defined. "In general, reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and/or practice" (Boud et al 1985; Boyd and Fales, 1983; Mezirow, 1981, Jarvis, 1992).
Our response to our own reflective practice should surely show our awareness of new understandings and how we will use those reflections to improve our future practice.

My personal learning journey involves a number of Communities of Practice (CoP), defined by Wenger, McDermott & Snyder (2002) as "groups of people who share a concern or passion ... whom deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis" (p.4). Wenger professes that participation in these communities is essential to learning; so essential to my personal learning journey is my primary CoP, our Senior Leadership Team.

Working collaboratively in a shared office space enables me to have professional learning conversations on a daily basis with my Senior Leadership Team (SLT) colleagues - discussing, theorising, debating, considering, exploring, reflecting, reviewing and analysing the learning and teaching taking place in our school, and in other learning institutions around the globe.

Sometimes the issues are very specific to our kura (school), and at other times our conversations revolve around learning and teaching on a more global perspective, e.g. learning systems in Finland, High Tech High in the United States, or the Manaiakalani cluster of schools in South Auckland and how we can relate that to our own practice. Our daily interactions are focused on how well we are doing things and can we do it better; how does what we are doing compare with other schools doing well, and most importantly, are we doing what will benefit our students most?

In order for these conversations and reflections to have purpose, we need to share our thoughts, ideas and findings with other Communities of Practice within our kura. We have five learning teams, each being a CoP focusing on their own unique group of students. Four of the teams are English medium divided into Year level focus groups - Year 1 & 2, Year 3 & 4, Year 5 & 6 and Year 7 & 8. The fifth team is Māori medium, Year 1 - 8.  Integrated within each of the five teams is a strong Sāmoan representation and a Sāmoan Enrichment.

My role in the Senior Leadership Team allows me to be involved in all these teams and to be a part of this network of learning communities and their CoP. Not only am I able to contribute ideas and reflections to these other Communities of Practice, I am further enlightened and exposed to ideas from the participants in these groups, often through their involvement in CoP outside our own school, e.g. our Principal regularly attends workshops for our local CoL (Community of Learning) being established with a group of local schools; other colleagues are engaging in Professional Learning outside our kura and regularly participate in other learning organisations, such as the Canterbury Literacy Association, or the Canterbury Primary Mathematics Symposium. This year, through our participation in the Mindlab Postgrad studies, a group of us from across different teams in the kura, have formed our own CoP and regularly have conversations reflecting on our day to day practice in relation to the content of this paper. We have helped and supported each other to try new things, reflect on our successes and mistakes and identify issues we need to investigate further.

Being an active member of these Communities of Practice helps to ensure that we embody the vision of our school - 'Empowering our students to prepare for positive futures through exploration, collaboration, and innovation'.

References:
Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. The Open University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Wenger,E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization, 7(2), 225-246.
Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.